AI Ticket Triage: Redact PII, Draft Replies with OpenAI + Gmail

AI-powered support triage that protects customer privacy—automatically

This n8n workflow receives incoming support tickets via a webhook, redacts common PII before sending content to OpenAI, then drafts structured replies, logs triage outcomes to Google Sheets, and sends Gmail escalation alerts for high-urgency or high-risk categories.

What this workflow does

• Receives tickets via Webhook: Accepts ticket fields such as customer name, email, subject, and message.
• Redacts sensitive data: Automatically removes common PII patterns from the ticket text—such as emails, phone numbers, card-like numbers, and secret-like tokens—while keeping the original contact fields for internal use.
• Calls OpenAI for classification + reply drafting: Sends the redacted ticket content to OpenAI to generate structured JSON including:
  • category, sentiment, urgency, SLA hours
  • summary, reply draft, and escalation reason
• Escalates when needed: Flags tickets for escalation when urgency is High or the category is Billing, Refund, Security, or Account Access. Includes a fallback if the OpenAI response parsing fails.
• Logs everything to Google Sheets: Appends ticket details and triage results to the Tickets tab.
• Sends Gmail alerts for flagged tickets: Issues an escalation email via Gmail, then returns a JSON response to the webhook caller indicating whether escalation is required.

Use cases

• SaaS operators routing urgent support issues to a human team while preserving customer privacy.
• Automation engineers standardizing triage with OpenAI while maintaining audit trails in Google Sheets.
• Security- and account-related ticket handling with automated escalation logic.

Technical details

• n8n nodes/integrations: webhook, if, code, http request, gmail, sticky note
• OpenAI setup: Use an HTTP Header Auth credential with Authorization: Bearer YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY for the OpenAI HTTP Request step.
• Google Sheets setup: Configure OAuth credentials and ensure a spreadsheet with a Tickets sheet; replace REPLACE_WITH_GOOGLE_SHEET_ID.